


Emeritus Years

by mage_989



Category: Star Trek: The Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Canon, Angst with a Happy Ending, Multi, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-30
Updated: 2016-12-30
Packaged: 2018-09-13 08:58:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9116047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mage_989/pseuds/mage_989
Summary: Their incarceration on Rura Penthe gets McCoy severely ill. Spock stays behind on Earth to take care of him, leaving Jim to go to the christening of the Enterprise B alone.





	

**Author's Note:**

> A fix-it fic for Star Trek Generations because I still hate that movie's ending.

As much as they hated to admit it at times, they weren’t as young as they used to be. They should have known better than to think they could still get into such scrapes and come out totally unscathed.

They don’t go to get checked out like they should have after they had been rescued from Rura Penthe. There had been too many other things to do; and after that there were others in greater need in sickbay. By the time they slowed down enough to focus on themselves Leonard’s voice was already hoarse. It was just a cough he said. Nothing serious he had told them, and they had actually believed him.

Twelve hours later he was on a bed in sickbay babbling in feverish delusions in between trying to hack up his entire respiratory system.

They stayed with him. Anything they could do to ease his suffering they did. It wasn’t that they didn’t trust the medical staff to do it, it just that it felt right to be there and helping any way they could. Even it was just sitting there wiping sweat off his face. When the fever broke at last and blue eyes looked at both of them with unspoken joy and gratitude as they remained wrapped around his body on the bio-bed Spock and Jim knew it had been the right course of action.

***

When they got home Spock took over most of Leonard’s care, out of a sense of guilt. Monitoring environmental controls, medication rotation, doing as much as he could on his own because it was his fault this had happened and he didn’t want to get Jim sick as well. While Leonard either groused about something or threw pillows at him, usually both.

And through out it all Jim usually ended up sleeping in the guest bedroom wondering late into the night if they even needed him anymore.

Jim sighed as he tried to sort out all the recent events in his mind. Spock didn’t want his help and Bones didn’t request it or ask him to do anything else either, not even telling Spock to back off. It seemed that just as Starfleet didn’t want him anymore Spock and Bones didn’t want him in the relationship anymore either.

Jim slowly pushed those thoughts away, rolled over in the empty bed, and tried to sleep, he had to be up early tomorrow.

***

“Look, Jim, I’m sick not dying, at least not a faster rate than normal, so just go and enjoy yourself.”

“I’m a glorified prop there, Bones, I’m not going to enjoy myself,” Jim said irritably, as he finished putting on his Starfleet jacket. He doesn’t want to go to the christening of an Enterprise he won’t be captain of, and he doesn’t know why he let Chekov and Scotty talk him into it.

Just then Spock came in holding breakfast.

“Leonard, I have made a meal that is appropriate for you in maintaining proper nutrient levels and it would be most beneficial to us both if you would simply eat it and cease complaining.”

Leonard glared at the tray.

“I hate oatmeal!”

Jim rolled his eyes and left without saying goodbye. He needed to get away from all this.

***

It was midday and Spock was taken a moment to care for himself by meditating out on the balcony, mostly to get Leonard to stop making his voice hoarse by yelling. Leonard was secretly glad that he had, Spock needed some time to himself, instead of looking after him every minute of the day. Leonard had just glanced up from his book to look at the chronometer, thinking that Jim should be on his way back to Earth in about half and hour, when the first call came in. Leonard ignored it, he wasn’t interested in talking to telemarketers or whoever it was, but then it came again...and again. After the seventh consecutive call he punched the button on the vidphone.

“What!?” he yelled.

“Doctor Leonard McCoy this is the CTW news calling. We have just received a report that Captain James T. Kirk has been killed in action, do you have any comment at this time?”

In shocked silence Leonard turned the phone back off.

“Spock!”

Spock ran into the bedroom to find Leonard huddled on the floor, his complexion ashen.

“I need to be sick.”

Spock got him off the floor carried to the en-suite bathroom. He held Leonard firmly as he was shaking and vomiting hard.

“Leonard, you must calm down.”

“I c-can’t Jim’s...Jim he’s...” he can’t say it, not like that. “Jim’s gone.”

The hours following that were spent huddled together in bed, holding each other tightly. Leonard sobbing that it was all his fault and that he should have been there, and Spock tried desperately to keep himself together for Leonard’s sake.

***

Jim carried the breakfast tray carefully towards the stairs, totally content to ignore the other man currently occupying his kitchen.

“Captain, look I need you help. I want you to leave the Nexus with me. We have to go back to a planet, Veridian III. We have to stop a man called Soran from destroying a star. Millions of lives are at stake.”

Jim turned to the man who claimed to be captain of the Enterprise.

“You say history considers me dead, who am I to argue with history?”

Captain Picard glared at him.

“You’re a Starfleet officer, you have a duty!”

“I don’t need to be lectured by you. I was out saving the galaxy when your grandfather was in diapers. Besides which I think the galaxy owes me one.”

Picard turned away from him and stormed into the living room. Jim rolled his eyes and went back down the stairs. Setting the breakfast tray aside he went over to the older man.

“Oh, I know, I was like you once, so worried about duty and obligation I couldn’t see past my own uniform. And what did it get me? An empty house.”

Or it soon would be anyway-or would have been was it? Jim sighed, it didn’t matter, an empty life and an empty heart that what was he had to look forward to in the outside world.

“Captain, please.”

Jim ignored him. He was retired in his time and if this man was who he said he was he’d be more useless in Picard’s time than he already was. There was nothing for him there if he left so why should he?

He conscience quickly provided an answer: because people were in danger and he couldn’t stand ideally by and do nothing and he knew it. Jim rubbed a hand over his eyes in frustration. Still after eighty years everything…everyone that he knew would be gone…Bones, Spock-it had been so long and they, they had thought he was dead. But he wasn’t, it was a temporal Nexus…a time gate and if...if Picard was from his future and this place was from his past then he could go to his present, right? He could make time go on as though he had never left.

He walked over to the mantle and let his hand move over the clock he had given Bones as a birthday gift. The same clock that was back home in their living room now after Bones, Spock, and he had finally gotten their acts together and got together. And it had been some wonderful years together hadn’t it?

Jim sighed he couldn’t stay here and let them think the worst had happened. Bones would blame himself for not being there. Then Spock would blame himself for getting Bones sick so he couldn’t be there. He couldn’t let them do that to themselves, not over him. It didn’t matter if they wanted to move the relationship into something that didn’t include him. He couldn’t leave them, could never hurt them. He loved them.

But still he had to stop Soran, but wait…wait just a minute...Soran would be on the Enterprise B! That was how he had found out about the Nexus in the first place! The sickbay wasn’t fully staffed, they would never notice if one medication was unaccounted for, especially when the refugees would be going in and out of there. It was perfect!

Jim turned to Picard, smiling.

“I think I know a way, a time, to make sure Soran won’t even be on Viradian III in your time.”

***

He’d missed his mark by that much, a handful of minutes. Short enough that he didn’t get chucked back into space and into the Nexus, but not long enough that he missed being caught in the rubble that came down as the room buckled and the force fields went up.

A support beam hit him, pinning his arm and knocking him out so that the calls from the bridge went unanswered; and when Chekov came in to ask if anyone had been in the room the answer was still yes.

When Jim came back to reality he had a good sized lump on his head, and he felt that his left arm was probably broken. Still he managed to get to sickbay undetected and got what he needed. Now he simply had to find Soran. It turned out the he didn’t even the description Picard provided of the man. He was the one on the auxiliary bridge trying to get the ship to turn around. Moving quickly Jim grabbed one of the man’s hands and twisting it behind him, with his other hand Jim awkwardly pressed the hypospray hard into his back.

“What are you doing!?”

“Tri-ox compound, it will simulate death. Then I can send you back.”

Soran looked at Jim with nothing but naked joy in his eyes.

“You-you will send me back?”

Jim nodded. “I will send you home.”

Soran smiled and let himself be taken to the torpedo bay. He drift-off peacefully as Jim pressed a second dose of the concoction into his bloodstream.

Jim worked quickly, even with his broken arm, and shot his hastily made makeshift tube off, watching it streak across space back to the ribbon.

Jim sighed in relief; the universe was safe once again. Now Jim just had to fix up his own life, and thankfully the lump on his head made an easy excuse for disorientation when Scotty found wandering around the halls of the ship some minutes later.

It was a madhouse after that. Scotty had shouted in joy and hugged him until he yelped in pain. Then Scotty had shepherded him off to sickbay where Chekov and his impromptu nursing staff had done their best to get his arm set and pain free until they reached the proper facilities back home. Meanwhile the rest of the crew, and press, had paraded in to ask multiple times how he had survived and to shake his good hand.

And in the confusion no one fixed the initial report of his death.

***

Spock rubbed a hand over his face tiredly. Leonard had yelled at him, but he had expected that. He wasn’t showing emotions yet and he was responsible. If Leonard and Jim had not been arrested they would never have been taken to that godforsaken place. Leonard would never have taken ill. They both would have gone with Jim to the launching of the Enterprise B and none of this would be happening.

Still, Spock knew such stress wasn’t good for the doctor and after the second blow up he had given him a sedative, and when he was positive Leonard was asleep he went out to the living room to sit by himself as the sun faded.

The vidphone had been disconnected and he kept the holo-screen off because the sounds drifting into the bedroom annoyed Leonard and kept him awake. Spock didn’t want to watch the reports of Jim’s…death anyway. Jim was gone in…was it a blaze of glory? Saving his ship, it seemed so right and at the same time so wrong. To Spock it seemed that saving people during a simple press cruise wasn’t big enough to be the final chapter of a legend.

Spock turned to look at an empty chair with a leather bound book, its pages bookmarked with an old playing card, propped up in it. It was impossible to comprehend, even to his logical mind, that the occupant of that chair would never sit in it again; that the book would forever remain unfinished.

Logic eventually asserted itself though, telling him that he should eat and keep his strength up, Leonard would know if he didn’t. Even sick as he was Spock knew Leonard was keeping an eye on him, the old country doctor in him never really off-duty.

Slowly Spock got up and wandered into the kitchen. He opened the fridge to try and find some simple snack and saw the dish of pasta sitting on shelf. Jim had requested it as a reward for going to that pompous press show. It was something so simple, but it was the final pressure that broke the dam. Spock back up against the counter on the opposite side of the tiny kitchen, slid to floor, and cried.

***

The Enterprise B and her crew returned to Earth, and after battling his way through the throngs of shocked reporters and journalists Jim was surprised, and hurt, to find that Spock wasn’t waiting for him. He knew he was taking care of Bones of course, but Bones didn’t need constant supervision anymore Spock should have been there.

Stuck for the moment Jim went to Starfleet Medical to get his arm looked at properly. Afterwards he called home, but wasn’t able to get through. He knew Spock often disconnected the phone when Bones slept and if he was asleep then Spock must be on his way.

Jim gave him another half an hour before he finally gave up and called a taxi. Now thoroughly agitated he walked over to the desk to ask why no one had been here.

The receptionist didn’t look up as she talked. “I think Captain Spock was informed of the initial report that you were killed in action. We haven’t been able to contact him again to correct that error and say you only received minor injuries.”

Jim didn’t wait for the taxi.

***

Spock could hear the faint rustling of fabric in the quiet apartment, Leonard was waking up. Ignoring his own dishevelled state Spock moved off the kitchen floor and went to help him. He stopped and turned back though as he heard the front door open. He went to see who it was, thinking that one of their old crew had come to give condolences, or someone from Starfleet, or reporters who wanted the first glimpse of the grieving crew. Spock came out of the hallway and stopped short.

A ghost was standing in their living room.

“I’m so sorry I’m late, but I didn’t know that you..you thought I was...”

Jim trailed off unsure of how to continue as Spock just stared at him.

“Jim?”

Not waiting for his lover to get over the shock of seeing him alive Jim came over and threw his arms around Spock. At that moment Spock realized that the dead man holding him was warm and breathing, and his control collapsed.

“There was a communications mix-up, they weren’t able to contact you. The whole thing was a mess-oh, Spock…please, please don’t.”

Spock could not obey a command from his superior officer and continued to cry.

“Shh...It’s all right, Spock, I’m not going anywhere.”

“I-I should have been there.”

“It’s all right you had-” Jim pulled back and looked Spock in the eye. “Bones-did you- does he know?”

“Spock?”

Both men turned to find Leonard leaning against the doorframe for support, his eyes wide at the sight before him.

“I think we need to call the hospital, I’m hallucinating.”

“I’m most pleased to tell you that you’re not, Leonard. The report of his death was greatly exaggerated.”

Instead of coming over to them Leonard stayed against the door, his mouth hanging open.

“They couldn’t get to me right away, but I’m all right,” Jim said, and tried to smile. “I even managed to keep the ship intact this time.”

Leonard just started breathing harder.

“Bones, Bones! Are you all right?”

He didn’t answer, just kept clutching the doorframe and taking deep wheezing breathes. Jim and Spock grabbed a hold of him and guided him back into the bedroom. They all sat on the bed, Leonard’s breathing slowly eased and he hugged Jim hard.

“I’m all right, Bones.”

Now it was Leonard who was crying. “Jim, Jim, I thought…we-I left you alone.”

“No, you two never could,” Jim answered, as they pressed close to him on both sides, kissing him softly, letting their hands roam over his body.

“Love you, Jim.”

Spock whispered those same words into Jim’s ear.

“And I love you two...always,” he said sincerely, overjoyed that they were all going to be okay.

They sat there together on the bed for a long while, basking in the joy at being able to be together.

“What time is it anyway?” Jim finally asked.

“4.3 seconds after midnight,” Spock answered, still running his fingers along Jim’s hands.

Leonard glared at Jim. “What the hell took you so long?!”

“I was delayed at Medical while they were treating a minor injury,” he said, holding his arm out slightly.

Leonard’s eyes widened. “You actually let them touch you! Jim, they’re a bunch of children! They wouldn’t know how to treat a bloody nose without a handbook!”

Jim laughed, kept his arm straight, and let shaking hands do what they did best.

The End


End file.
